Google+ for consumers will shut down on April 2nd

It’s no secret that Google planned to pull life support from the consumer version of Google+, its failure of a social network, in April. Until now, though, we didn’t know the exact date. That date, Google announced today, is April 2.

On that date, Google will start deleting all content, including Google+ pages, photos and videos, and everything else on the site. If you were one of the last few Google+ users — or you just feel nostalgic about the stuff you posted there — now is the time to download all of that data.

If your company uses Google+ (and there must be some companies that do), then rest assured you will still be able to use it for the foreseeable future. Google is only shutting down the consumer version, as well as all Google+ APIs. Indeed, those APIs, which turned out to be major security liabilities, will shut down on March 7.

And there you have it. That’s the curtain call for Google+, the social network that could’ve been, from an era when Google desperately tried to catch up with Facebook and Twitter and integrated Google+ into every conceivable product. It even went so far as changing its sacred search results based on social signals (which really didn’t work all that well). The result was a bit of a disaster for Google and it took a while to right the ship.